


a potential bloody end

by togglemaps



Series: trope bingo round 11 [2]
Category: Eureka (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Developing Relationship, M/M, Trope Bingo Round 11, trope bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 05:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16361495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togglemaps/pseuds/togglemaps
Summary: The cell wouldn't hold him. If they'd put him in the bowels of Global Dynamics, in the strongest and most impenetrable cell they had, it still wouldn't hold him. Humans had forgotten a great deal in the years since this town was built. Learned so much, but forgotten even more.





	a potential bloody end

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for my trope bingo card, for the au: fantasy prompt. I don't think there's any triggers that need tagging but let me know if there's something I should tag for. 
> 
> I'm [togglemaps](http://togglemaps.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr too. There is a sequel forthcoming, also for my trope bingo card.

The cell wouldn't hold him. If they'd put him in the bowels of Global Dynamics, in the strongest and most impenetrable cell they had, it still wouldn't hold him. Humans had forgotten a great deal in the years since this town was built. Learned so much, but forgotten even more. 

You couldn't trap a fae in a cell that wasn't made of iron and he smiled at Jack, wide and pleased, for he knew it too. 

Jack had sent Lupo to GD, told her he would watch this man who wasn’t a man, who slipped around the lens of a camera, unseen, unheard, unnoticed. 

“She’ll be dead by now,” the fae sneered. “Your mother. No creature shall rule as long as she, not without it ending bloody.” 

All rulers of the fae ended their reigns bloody. They knew no other way. 

“What's your name?” Jack asked. 

The fae laughed. “You think me a fool? You are more than mortal enough to trap me with so important a thing.” 

Maybe. Jack hadn't been the last time a fae had given him their name, but that had been decades ago. He was a man now, not a boy, and there was gray in his hair, if he looked close. Was he still a creature of magic as much as any of his mother’s children? Once, he had been thought the most powerful among them, before he had turned his back. 

Perhaps the grey in his hair, the lines around his mouth and eyes, were nothing more than fancy and all he needed to do was reach and pull and they would unravel like a blanket with a loose thread. 

The fae smiled, wrapped his hands around the bars of his cage. The hinges creaked and groaned and when he let it go, it fell to the ground. “Humans,” he said. “Always needing to improve everything.” He stepped over the fallen remains of the cells walls. “What will you tell them, I wonder?” 

“The truth,” Jack said. “They'll find a way to make sense of it. Or to make it fit, anyway.” Like the Artifact, which was something other than science or fact. Jack had seen a man wander around its shell, shaking his head. A unicorn had followed at the man’s back, waiting for his rider to return. The man had the glow of the keepers, bound to keep such things out of harms way. Clearly, this one had gotten away from him. Carl Carlson hadn't been meant for magic anymore than Alison Blake or Nathan Stark was. Jack had been alone in this all his life and the sadness of it was barely more than a prick these days. 

Better to live among people who thought you were one of them, than among those who knew you weren't. 

The fae laughed and laughed until he reached the door and could only press uselessly against the invisible barrier that trapped him. Then, he screamed. “Wretched half breed! I can keep you from going to her aid from within your pathetic prison. You think it could hold me?” 

Even his mother, a queen who had ruled 400 years, would have struggled to escape from a prison he had weaved. He smiled. “She doesn't require aid from the likes of you.” And if she did, nothing Jack could do would save her. 

“Carter?” 

Of course it would be Stark. Jack tried to imagine who in this town wouldn’t be an unwelcome guest at this moment. Henry, maybe. Henry understood things that could not be understood. 

Zoe knew nothing of her grandmother. At least it wasn't Zoe. 

“Yes, yes,” the fae said. “Set me free hmm? He can't have warded this place from you and yours. Stand in the doorway. Let me use you as a bridge. I will repay you. My word is worth more than gold.” 

“I wouldn't take the offer, Stark,” Jack said, mildly. “Gold is worth very little to him.” 

“How did he get out of the cell?” Stark demanded. 

“Hinges fell off.” Jack pointed at the door that still lay on the ground. 

“And why can't he step out of the sheriff’s office?” 

Jack shrugged. 

The fae screamed again and turned away from the doorway. “Where did you put it? A talisman? It must be.” He began tearing apart the office, starting with the shelf closest to him. 

Jack just stood and watched. There was no talisman, not how the fae meant. He’d inscribed the spell under the floorboards one night and then returned them to their place when he was done. It would have been stronger if he'd placed it on the foundations, but that would have taken longer and people thought badly enough of him already. He could be the town idiot. He wouldn't be the town heretic. 

“Carter,” Stark said, his voice a low warning. 

“You don't have to worry,” Jack said. “One way or another, he'll be gone soon.” 

And then night fell at two o'clock in the afternoon in a large corner of Oregon. 

His mother liked her theatrics. 

When the fae saw her, he screamed and fell to his knees. “Mercy!” he said. “Your son still lives! Please! I could have murdered him and yet here he stands!” 

Jack cocked an eyebrow. “You couldn't even get out of the building.” Jack grabbed him by the arm and dragged him outside and his mother grabbed the fae around his neck and lifted him off his feet. 

“Pathetic,” she hissed. His flesh burned where she held him. “You think I have ruled for 400 years by luck? I always look for worms like you. Why are none of you great and terrible serpents, so we might have stories to terrify our children?” He disappeared and she wiped her hand on Jack’s shirt. 

“Really?” he asked. 

She smiled. “The halls swam with blood when I took the throne, you know. It was a proper slaughter.” 

He winced. 

“If you hadn't always been so soft, I would have smothered you in your sleep,” she said, fond and scornful. She rubbed her thumb against his temple, where the hair was beginning to grey. “You will come home soon, I think.” 

“You've Seen it?” Dear god, he hoped not. There was no place for him anywhere and nowhere made him feel it more than his mother's court. 

“No,” she said, sad. 

“What the fuck, Carter?” Stark demanded. 

“This is the one who came upon Julius’ burden.” 

“That was the keeper’s name?” 

“Yes.” She frowned, then ran a single finger from high between Stark’s eyes around to his left temple. “You would have made a poor keeper for it, human. Some things aren't meant to be understood. They simply are.” 

“Keeper—you're talking about the Artifict, aren't you? You know what it is?” Stark asked, eager. 

“No. Weren't you listening?” She turned to Jack and scowled. “You keep poor company.” 

“Yeah, well, better than the company you keep.” 

“Mine is more interesting.” 

“More interesting than him, I’ll give you.” 

She took his face in her hands and kissed his cheek. “Come home,” she said. “There will always be a place for you with me.” 

He shook his head and closed his eyes for only a little longer than a blink. When he opened them, she was gone and it was day again. 

“What the fuck, Carter,” Stark repeated. 

“Oh please,” Jack said. “Like this is the strangest thing to ever happen in this town. Do you remember the dead woman who turned out to be a clone? Because I remember the dead woman who turned out to be a clone.” 

“It was the middle of the day and then it was the dead of night and then it was the middle of the day again. I can explain a clone. I can't explain that.” 

“I'm sure you'll come up with something.” 

 

Four days later, Stark slipped into the booth opposite him at Cafe Diem. He looked frustrated, jaw clenched and brow furrowed, and almost…unkempt. It was unlike him. “People have decided it was a freak occurrence and moved on.” 

“Just one of those Eureka things,” Jack said mildly. 

“How many of those Eureka things are actually whatever she was?” 

He sounded so grim that Jack wanted to laugh. “Surprisingly few, actually.” Jack scowled. “Regular people being able to do things they shouldn’t be able to do is a lot more common.” 

“The Artifact was, though.” 

“Yes. I didn't get the chance to talk to its keeper before it left, I'm afraid.” 

“Its keeper,” Stark said flatly. 

“Yes. He had a unicorn, so I assume it was relatively important.” 

“A unicorn.” 

“Yes. The keeper of the Golden Fleece has a dragon apparently, so I wouldn't think it so important.” 

“You're screwing with me.” 

“No. I haven't seen that particular dragon personally, but the woman who told me was too boring to have made it up.” 

“Will I ever be able to see the world the same?” Nathan asked, sounding just a little desperate. 

Jack swallowed a laugh. It wasn’t surprising this had ruffled Stark, but it was amusing all the same. “If you were going to go back to living with your eyes closed, you'd have done it already, I'm afraid.” Maybe it was fae magic that smoothed things over or maybe humans did the work for them. Didn’t really matter. The end result was the same. People dismissed the strangeness and moved on. “There's a sprite that lives by the pond in your yard, by the way. Make friends with her and you'll never lose your keys again.” 

Stark opened his mouth and shut it again, then said, “Please tell me you’re screwing with me. Please.” 

He wasn't. “Plant some sage, they like that. And leave out a bowl of tea for her in the evening. Any kind will do until she tells you her favourite. Oh, and no tea bags. They don't like the taste of the paper.” 

Jack would never, ever forget the wide eyed look of astonishment he got when he said that and he laughed, out loud while sitting alone in his car, when he saw Stark leaving the local grocery store with a sage plant and some packets of loose leaf tea. 

“I no longer have any odd socks,” Stark said when they were walking through the woods a few weeks later, searching for a mutant hedgehog that had gotten out of its cage. “And she likes camomile. How likely is it that I'm going mad, do you think?” 

“Why would you suddenly not have any odd socks if you were going mad?” 

“I'm a smart man, I'm sure I could manage it.” 

“I wouldn't stop leaving the tea,” Jack advised. “She’ll be offended.” 

Nathan groaned.


End file.
